


SF LGBTQ/NQS, 2019

by prodigalDaughter



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gay Pride, Multi, also a lot of other people are talked about, also culture blending, in which PD throws her postgame headcanons at you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:19:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigalDaughter/pseuds/prodigalDaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Game is over and the world is new, people still find reasons to gather and love, and Karkat Vantas still finds reasons to feel like he doesn't belong. Originally for the meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	SF LGBTQ/NQS, 2019

It's warmer than typical, today, and only some of it is due to the press of half-clothed bodies. The fog has unexpectedly lifted, letting Earth's mild sun beat down on the slanted roads and absurdly green trees in the parks, and the wind is low, leaving the ocean breeze to mind its own business and not cool down the city. It's pleasantly not-freezing to you, but Gamzee's practically overheating. You knew he would, and slathered his bare skin in sun cream this morning so he wouldn't bleach himself out, given how he's got no sleeves on. 

Not that it matters at the moment, as the two of you ducked off into a shady alley away from the parade, which isn't much of a parade in that it isn't all going in one direction. It's just one of the biggest masses of people you've ever been exposed to, milling around aimlessly and shouting to one another-- rarely at, usually to, which is unsettling. You were the one who urged Gamzee off to the side, though he came easily. He's like that. He's too good for you.

You glare balefully at the NQS banner, and he notices. Always too damn good for you.

NQS is a shitty acronym, and periodically someone will notice that. They'll talk about problematic rhetoric and how using the term "Non-Quadrant-Standard" is inherently marginalizing, and people will get really vehement about changing it, but then somebody else will call it a reclamation of terms and noone will be able to come up with a good replacement and everyone will forget about it for a few perigees. It's too big of a community to effect a serious change like that anyway, which is in part the fault of the damn acronym, because it's so inclusive. 

Non-Quadrant-Standard means trolls like your Relative-- in one world you were his Ancestor (which is apparently a thing) and in another he was yours, and in the new one you just obviously share a significant proportion of your genetic code, which means a lot to humans so you deal with it-- who is only into one person in any romantic way at all, and Nepeta's Relative who does the same thing (for him), but it also means trolls who favour certain quadrants heavily over others, don't feel some of them, some who make more distinctions, or want more than one moirail or matesprit or kismesis, anything that isn't exactly what drone-fuelled society was set up for.

Nowadays it also means humans who use quadrants, whose folding into the group you guess was an obvious consequence of integration, but it's also stretched to mean people like Kanaya who have a thing for girls or boys, and that you blame firmly on politics and humans. 

Shortly after Contact-- which, thankfully, happened when you were a wiggler, because you don't think you could have dealt with a new world where you had your memories but also no way of yelling at your human co-players-- the particularly fervent NQS activists saw kindred spirits in the human rights movement for… what the fuck even. You hate their acronym even more than NQS, because it's so long and changes all the time and you swear you've seen it with three Qs at one point. But the BLUHGTQQQ-whatever people had a history of parades, apparently, or as much of a history as pretty much any human social movement has. They're such a young baby-culture.

Something in the back of your head reminds you that the NQS movement's main issue was getting people out of being culled, while most countries on the Earth had moved past that into salary discrimination and shit. Yet another way the soft pink assholes are doing better than you, despite the fact that you made them! But they let you all join their parade anyway, merged it. Yippee-ki-wastelicking-yay. How did you botch this so hard?

Gamzee stops your train of thought with a hand slowly combing through your hair. His claws gently trail across your scalp. He is too good at this crap. 

"You're thinking bad shit."  
"And you're really fucking tall; why does this need to be stated?" He laughs at you, and you let him bury your head in his chest. His lowest thoraxal bone flange presses a little into your eye socket, but you don't mind. It feels kind of nice.  
"Which bad shit is it today?"  
"Humans are assholes."  
"No, it ain't."

It, not they. He's not saying humans aren't assholes, though he probably would, he's saying that isn't what's worrying you. You want to blame his knowing this on his freaky dream powers, but he doesn't use those on you without your permission and you damn well know it. 

The problem is that you're not sure you should be here. You know people who fucking deserve it, who would have been culled on the spot as little as three sweeps ago, but you? Your problems are other problems; somebody just has to cut you open to know you're a freak, not look at who you are or aren't pailing and how. It seems wrong to you that you should be in their group when you're not, really. How in the hell did John convince you to come.

"You're plenty welcome, bro. You haven't gotta be this tall to enter; just call yourself support or allied or somefuck if you don't wanna think on it too hard. These BLT folks are pretty nice about that shit."  
"Pretty sure BLT is a sandwich, Gamzee."  
"Huh," he smiles. "I like sandwiches."  
"I know."  
But all too soon he gets back to the point. "Look at me," he says, "I'm pretty fuckin' standard-as-they-say and I'm here."  
You snort. "Your matesprit can't feel hate, no shit you're here."  
"Doesn't," he corrects you quietly. Wow: come one, come all to gawk at Karkat Vantas, the idiot who is so bad at not being a shithead that he bad-mouths his friend's inclinations or lack thereof, right out in the open, _at the NQS/LGBTQ parade._ No, no, don't throw him food, throw bricks instead. 

But Gamzee forgives you. He always does. 

He asks you if you want to go find John, and you tell him that's the last thing you want to do right now. You're too much of a mess for that, and maybe if you don't talk to anyone it'll be like you were never here. But you can't not talk, so you talk to Gamzee, because he won't hold it against you. 

John's theoretically here as an ally or whatever too, you tell him, because after all your crap got worked out and you both figured out that, in the event of not being busy with a grotesquely candy-coloured apocalypse, you fancied each other quite a lot, he decided that labels were stupid and dived right in to kissing you on the cheek and putting his arms around you and making you dance with him to terrible slow music. He and Gamzee are the parts of your life that don't suck at all.

But given that he doesn't do labels on himself, he's here for friends. Lalonde, mostly-- Rose, you mean, though you think Roxy's out there somewhere too-- who finds the label immensely important. She went on a long rant about it once, about how she and Kanaya both cut clean and traditionally feminine figures, and how by challenging public perception by clearly identifying herself as a lesbian rather than keeping her identity _sub rosa_ she made some infinitesimal attempt to words words words bluh you stopped paying attention. 

You don't know how she and Kanaya haven't talked each-other to death, but okay. Not your business. 

Gamzee thinks John being here as support is something you should be taking to heart. You're different from John, though. John's here for a clear-cut reason: support his friends, swell the numbers, make a statement. 

"You got me, though," he says, "and I got connections. But even else, with just you, you got a human matesprit, which ain't a thing nobody was real happy with right around Contact, nor ain't in a lot of both worlds now either. You got your black thoughts which I ain't gonna talk about right now cuz I know that look, but I know 'em and you know 'em and you oughtta think on 'em a little cuz I don't think that's standard. Even if you were, though, you can be any the fuck where you want to, and this is a damn fine place to wanna be. Look out at it, man. All these people. All colours, humans and trolls all mixing around pink and ash and brown and coal and what the fuck even is that gorgeous shit and another kinda grey and it's so sweet out here. There's a lotta bright colours. Folk out here getting so happy together. It's beautiful."

He started calling things "beautiful" a lot after the Game climaxed and you met the demons, and every time he says it you know exactly what he isn't saying.

He was a mess in the wrap-up. There was this period of a few perigees where everyone was putting the finishing touches on the new world, but you didn't give any say in any of it because you were too busy sitting with Gamzee while he wiped his face with a cloth over and over, gently stopping him before he rubbed his skin raw and indigo, reminding him quietly that he was clean, he didn't need to wash anymore. It had been a mockery, but it had been the real thing. Everything about how he wanted the world to end, all of the words he learned were not coined by creatures who loved trolls and wanted them to be joined in the end, _bleeding together_ as he used to say with such conviction, but by things that cared none for you and only for your deaths. Never meet your heroes, people say on Earth. Never meet your Messiahs. 

Meeting your Gods turned out pretty well for John and Rose, though, and also Terezi, who's moirails with Dave these days; a relationship you do not even attempt to fathom, the air too thick with cherry syrup and irony. Half your friends have relationships you totally don't get, which is weird to you because you used to understand everything about that.

But then everybody got older. And you can tell they're good for each-other; you're just not totally clear on how.

Gamzee's looking down at you and you remember sitting in the bath with him, the water much too cold so it wouldn't burn him, gently pressing ice to his cheek where he'd torn through it with a claw. He had been so angry, but he was entirely docile for you then. You trust him completely.

So maybe he's right. You do have an human matesprit. Said matesprit is a boy, which humans care about for stupid reasons. You have, as Gamzee put it, your "black thoughts", which you still aren't sure about. You don't know if you have fucked-up standards, serious emotional problems, or legitimately feel that quadrant weirdly. You've talked to him at great length about this. You're not sure if you'll ever know, but maybe it's abnormal in a way that's okay as opposed to unhealthy. He thinks so.

You have a Relative who is monoamorous, and a friend with an insurmountable fetish for girls. You know a smug asshole who has the same thing for boys, and also apparently enjoys the company of machines. You know a girl who takes her girlfriend out on double dates with her own Relative (who used to be her mother) and _her_ girlfriend, during which they apparently throw compliments like caltrops. You have a lot of people that you care about like hell, and one of them is winding his hand through your hair, looking like he's going to start kissing your forehead if you don't cheer up. And as appealing as that is, you're in public.

So what the hell. Maybe that really is non-standard enough for you to go find John, and maybe later on you'll eat some ice cream out of an obscenely-shaped cup.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for this prompt on the meme: http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/38154.html?thread=39030794#cmt39030794


End file.
